


Underneath the Great Pine Tree

by artemisgrace



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ghosts, Happy Ending, Hypothermia, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Reincarnation, Resurrection, and the eventual smooches, but he is revived, life after death, love from beyond the grave, rated mature for the death n stuff, so I didn't use the archive warning, warning for child death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-06-21 11:38:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15556884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemisgrace/pseuds/artemisgrace
Summary: "When I lived the first time, my name was Marcel. I knew you then . . ."A story of a young man gifted with a second life after his first ended far too soon, and of a love stronger than the grave."Back then, my name was Marcel. Now, it is Viktor."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a multi-chapter fic, though not as long as my others. The story originated with a dream I had while on vacation in Singapore, a dream that I thought might translate quite well to fiction.  
> I've always fancied the notion of a love that lasts beyond death. Have you?

It was so terribly, terribly cold . . . a dreadful chill crawled up my legs from where my feet met the frosted ground, slowly deadening my limbs, ‘til I could hardly feel them. I hugged myself tight, pulling my school jacket close about me as I trudged on, slogging through the quickly deepening snow.

The sky was a sort of grey-white, tinged with the purply blue of fast approaching nightfall, snowflakes coming away and falling to earth like flakes of peeling paint from the ceiling of my house, but these fell quicker, accumulating upon the chilled earth of the forest floor.

It wasn’t meant to snow that night, it should never have snowed so early in the year, but that evening a storm had descended, greyish clouds like a thick blanket of slightly dirty wool covering the sky above, oppressive, suffocating, blocking out what should have been the waning sunlight of an autumn evening. The woods began to darken around me as I walked on in search of home, trying to follow my own footprints back even as they slowly disappeared under the pure, sparkling coat of fresh snow.

Falling flakes stuck to my clothes and my hair, clung to my eyelashes, and, as it got colder, began to rest unmelted upon my face, the heat of my skin no longer enough to melt it. As I turned about, looking for the path, I found my vision obscured, though I could not tell if the blur was the blizzard thickening around me, or simply the buildup of frost in my eyelashes, impeding my sight.

Stumbling ahead, I almost fell but managed to catch myself on the rough bark of a dying pine tree, itself weighed down heavily by the horrid falling sky. My legs failing me, I slid down to the ground, my frosted clothes catching against the coarse texture of the wood, and almost as if on cue, as my knees hit the forest floor, my body started to shake. Not shiver, but shake, violently, as if possessed by some malevolent force, by the spirit of the killing winter itself.

I should have been at home, I should never have gone out! I should never have wandered into the forest . . . I can’t walk anymore, but someone will come for me, they will . . .

I began, as I sat there in the shelter of the tree, to feel disconnected, as though I were floating away from myself, like an errant balloon . . . on the day of the county fair . . .

Looking down at myself, I faintly realized that my hands were discolored; they’d gone purple, turning blue towards the tips, like an odd reflection of the wintry sky in my body. I shakily brought my hand to my lips, but I couldn’t feel my own touch, in either my lips or my fingertips, coldness fading to merely numbness. I distantly realized that I felt disjointed, like a broken marionette, tangled up in its own snapped strings.

I hadn’t even the sense to be horrified . . .

My breath coming shallowly, my mind foggy, I slid down onto my back underneath the pine, staring up at the pale sky that peeked between snow laden branches of green needles, so deep a green they appeared black, forming a monochrome landscape for my dying eyes to perceive.

No one had come for me, not yet. They might still, but they would be too late. 

I don’t want it to end like this!

But no one came . . . no one . . . came . . .

The sky continued to fall in frosty fragments, gradually covering me and obscuring my form from the living world as my eyes clouded, my vision going white as I continued to stare up at the sky, wishing things had been otherwise . . . Perhaps such is the fate of all people, whether they know it or not . . .

I froze to death underneath the old pine, on that unseasonably cold night in 1901. I was ten years old.

Back then, my name was Marcel. Now, it is Viktor.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our narrator, Viktor, describes the events that followed after his death . . . and the events surrounding his resurrection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really ought to have waited to post this chapter, but I already had it written and I'm impatient by nature, so . . . here we are.

Years passed as if in a dream- and perhaps it was a dream, I cannot claim to know- as I lay there on the cold ground, gazing up at the sky that wheeled about, snow clouds giving way to sunlight, to sunset, to stars that spun about in a clear sky. Over and over again it whirled above me and I couldn’t tear my sight from it, mesmerized. Or perhaps it was because I had no physical, human eyes to look or not look with . . .

They found my body when winter ended, in early 1902. I’m not sure who it was who discovered me, but I can only hope it wasn’t someone who knew me personally . . . I had surely already caused enough grief . . . Men came, policemen, to take my body away, to remove me from the snow melt and dead leaves that had been my burial place, but even as my bones were removed, I remained exactly as I had fallen . . . still looking up at the sky . . . always conscious, but never quite awake . . .

A decade passed like that, still in my dream state, watching the endless revolving of the sun, moon, and stars, until one day, I sat up. I tore my eyes from the sky and brought them back down to gaze upon the earth, my home. 

I shifted from my resting place, sitting up on elbows I shouldn’t have anymore, drawing breath with lungs I shouldn’t have, casting my eyes about for some sort of explanation or at least something familiar, with eyes that I ought not to have. 

My eyes, my lungs, my elbows, all of me had long since returned to dust, hadn’t they?

I held the hand that I shouldn’t have up before my eyes, and . . . it was not the hand I remembered. It was larger, the size of a grown man’s hand . . . and so was the rest of me, all the proportions of a grown man in his twenties, but the same pallor of skin I used to have, and a mole at the base of my left thumb. These hands were mine, there could be no doubt, but they had grown the way that I never had the chance to in life.

Some confusing emotion between panic and relief gripped me like a hand squeezing my brand new heart, and I scrambled onto my hands and knees, gripping the earth beneath me with twitching fingers. I jerked my head up to look around, suddenly aware that I hadn’t been roused from whatever stupor I had been in by nothing at all, no, there was something else here in the woods, another physical presence. Listening hard, breath coming faster and faster, I realized that the occasional footstep echoed between the trees that towered above, the impact of someone’s foot meeting with the forest floor creating the sound of crunching leaves and needles and of snapping twigs. Whoever it was, they were coming closer . . .

The panic welled up in my chest, so much that I felt like I wasn’t drawing breath at all, no matter how quickly my lungs expanded and contracted, and it felt almost like dying all over again. My vision went a bit fuzzy from the lack of air and I wheezed, an attempt to call out, or scream, or something, and I heard a voice call back to me.

A man emerged from around a blackberry bramble, his eyes casting about for the source of the sound, for me. He had dark hair and dark eyes, kind, concerned eyes that focused on me where I lay upon the ground.

“Oh my god!” I heard him exclaim, “Are you okay?”

I knew not how to respond, emotion roiling within me as I realized that I really was alive again, that I could be heard, that I could be seen, that I could affect the physical world, and it could affect me in return. I was alive.

I was alive.

“Hey, can you hear me?” the man asked, rushing towards me, completely ignoring the brambles that pulled at his trousers as he ran.

I nodded, still unable to bring myself to speak.

“Can you speak?” he questioned, reaching me and coming to kneel at my side, a gentle, warm hand coming to rest on my shoulder, which I suddenly realized to be bare.

I shook my head, panting, desperately trying to gather myself.

“Okay, I’m going to get you out of here, don’t you worry,” he assured me calmly, despite his obvious shock at finding me.

He took off the long coat he was wearing and passed it to me. I reached out for it, but my hands were shaking such that I couldn’t properly grasp it. 

“Hold out your arm,” he said, gripping the coat, and as I obeyed, he carefully slipped the sleeve onto my right arm, then my left, gently, as one would when dressing an infant.

I suppose I must have looked as weak as an infant, shaking and panting as I was.  
Once the coat was securely on my person, the stranger did up the buttons for me, protecting my bare body from the elements, mild as they were that afternoon. Turning so that he knelt beside me, the man took my arm and slung it over his own shoulder, wrapping his own strong arm around my waist to haul me upright.

It was sunny, I realized as I cast my eyes up, towards the sky that had become so very familiar to me; it must have been spring, judging by the temperate climate. I hadn’t lived until spring in my last life . . . but in this new one, I savored the feeling of the spring breeze that caressed my face. I hadn’t felt the wind for a decade or so . . . but I could now . . .

I was alive . . . really, truly, alive . . .

The man held me tight as he led me, step my trembling step out of the forest, out of my own personal graveyard. We came to a road, a road that I recognized, and tears sprang unbidden and unwanted to my eyes. This was the road I had been trying to find that night . . . this was the road that, had I managed to find it, I wouldn’t have died. This was the road to my hometown.

My shoulders shook as I tried to hold back the emotion that threatened to overcome me, and the stranger, bless him, noticed immediately.

“Are you in pain?” he asked, concerned, stopping in his tracks and adjusting his hold on me, likely an attempt to keep me comfortable.

I nodded. It was true, after all, even if the pain wasn’t strictly physical. Or perhaps it was; my heart hurt so intently I couldn’t really be sure whether the agony was born of the mind or the physical body.

“Hang in there,” he told me, restrengthening his grip on me and forging ahead, “We’re almost to town and I’ll get you to the doctor. You’ll be alright.”

I forced my new feet to move, one step and then another, allowing myself to be half-led, half-carried along the road, small plumes of dust rising from the track beneath our feet. But I couldn’t stop myself from sobbing. Crying for myself, grieving for the life I lost, and weeping with confused joy over the new life I had received. Crying with disbelief over my circumstances, and over the kindness of this stranger, perhaps the greatest kindness that I had ever known outside the love of my mother. 

Mother . . . what has happened to her? My friends? My neighbors? Do they yet live? 

Would they ever recognize me if I returned? Could they ever even accept the idea of such a thing?

As we walked, I cried until I hadn’t the energy to cry any more, every ounce of strength being devoted into trudging onwards as buildings appeared and grew closer. Some of the buildings were the same as I remembered, but others were different, having been repainted, redecorated, or, in a couple of cases, entirely rebuilt. This was only the town I had grown up in by half measures. I had been gone too long for it to still be truly mine. 

Upon reaching the main street, my companion began to call out.

“Someone! I need help!” he shouted, struggling now to keep me upright, “Help me!”

From behind a building came two men I vaguely recognized, and from another building a young woman emerged, running out onto her porch with a hand clasped to her chest, eyes seeking the one in need. Spying us where we stood in the road, all three of them came running to us, abandoning whatever they had been doing to attend to my still shouting companion and myself.

“Oh my goodness!” the woman shouted, seeing me, largely held up by the kindly man as my strength began to fail me.

“I found him in the woods,” my companion explained as one of the other men came to support my other side, “I think he was robbed. He’s in pain and I think he’s been hurt.”

The remaining man nodded, gesturing for my companion to hand me over.

“Michele,” he told the man holding my arm, “you take his top half, I’ll carry his legs. I think the doctor is home right now.”

“Of course,” replied the man called Michele, taking my other arm as my kindly, and now likely very tired, companion stepped aside, taking upon himself the weight of half my body.

The other, older man, whose name I hadn’t yet heard, took ahold of my legs and together they lifted me entirely off of the ground, taking the weight mercifully off of my exhausted legs.

“Careful,” warned my companion, stepping forward to tuck the his coat back around my body where it had begun to slip, “when I found him he was entirely naked. I think they stole his clothes too.”

“Ah,” said the older man before turning to the young woman, “Mila, go run ahead and tell the doctor he’s got a patient to see. A man who’s been robbed and left in the woods.”

“Ah- alright,” she agreed, turning swiftly and running off down the road, out of my line of sight.

“Hang on, sir,” said Michele, smiling down at me as he and the older man began to carry me away, “We’ll get you seen to and you’ll be just fine.”

I tried to smile back, thankful for the words, but I don’t know how successful I was in doing so. The last I saw before my eyes fluttered shut was my savior from the woods, the dark-haired man, walking along beside me. There was something so familiar about him, so . . . safe . . .

My last thought, as consciousness left me, was this: I am alive.

I am alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya boi Yuuri has arrived, and he is the best person to run into when you're butt-ass naked in the woods.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our narrator awakes in the home of the town's doctor, spending some time listening to what was going on around him. In doing so, he realizes that he recognizes the person who found him in the woods . . . and a decade-old guilt reveals itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't properly write right now because my glasses are off getting fixed, but I already had this written and I can see enough at least to post stuff, so here ya go . . .
> 
> If you're one of the folks who came over to check out this fic after reading Settle Down, be sure to say hi! It makes me really happy to have people interested in multiple of my works :)

“How is he, doc?” I heard a voice faintly say as I drifted somewhere between awake and asleep.

“He appears to be largely in good health,” a deeper, older-sounding voice replied, “I found no injuries on his person, no signs of any sort of struggle, but based upon his reactions, I would suspect that this fellow has taken quite a serious knock to the head.”

“Head injury?”

“Mm,” the deeper voice hummed as confirmation, “Whoever robbed him must have hit him from behind, knocking him flat out before he could make so much as a peep.”

“That’s awful,” a feminine voice whispered, a different voice than that of the woman before . . . Mila . . .

“Indeed,” the older voice agreed, before appearing to address another person, “Michele?”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you take a few of the men out to the woods where this gentleman was found. See if you can find any of his belongings, or any sign of the ruffians who attacked him.”

“Yes, doctor!” Michele said, and I could hear the sound of his footsteps retreating, followed by the opening and closing of a door.

“And Sara?”

“Yes?” said the feminine voice again, apparently belonging to a woman called Sara.

“Follow your brother and make sure he doesn’t get carried away, won’t you?”

“Yes, doctor,” Sara answered, with a light muffled laugh, before leaving herself, if the creak of the floorboards was anything to go by.

“How severe is the injury, doctor?” a new voice spoke up, a voice I recognized as that of my savior.

“It’s hard to say,” came the response, “We won’t really know for sure until he wakes up and is able to communicate with us, but I suspect he may have some issues with coordination, and possibly some amount of confusion or even memory problems.”

“He’ll need someone to care for him . . .”

“Now, Yuuri,” the doctor chided, “I know that you found him and you must feel some sort of obligation, but you can’t save everyone. We really should send this man to the hospital in the city.”

Yuuri? I knew that name . . . wasn’t that the name of the neighbor’s child?

“That place?” my savior, Yuuri said, his tone laden with disdain, “They don’t have the resources for proper personalized care! They did nothing to help my mother when she was ill that we couldn’t do better at home.”

“You know next to nothing of this man . . .”

“I know that he was lost and alone. I know that I found him.” Yuuri stated, voice tight, “And he reminds me of someone. I know from that alone that he is a good person.”

Yuuri . . . all these years later, he would be a grown man now . . .

“You mean,” the doctor spoke up, sounding more than a little hesitant, “that boy? Your mother told me about him during one of my home visits . . . I know that you cared for him very deeply, and how much it must have hurt you when they found him-”

“You have no idea,” Yuuri interrupted “You hadn’t come here yet. You don’t know what it was like for any of us.”

“He was your friend, you looked up to him,” the doctor said calmly, “And I can see how this stranger would remind you of him. Not many people have such silvery blond hair . . . But just because this man looks like him doesn’t mean that they are at all alike.”

Oh god . . . they were talking about me . . . not just the me who lies here now, but the me who died in the forest . . . Yuuri, I remembered him now. The son of our neighbor’s, a sweet little thing, a couple years younger than myself, who I used to play with in the front garden of my house . . . I was surprised that he remembered me, the little boy, Marcel, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been . . . it must have been unspeakably awful for him when I went missing, and even worse when they found my body. That sort of thing would leave a lasting mark.

Oh, Yuuri . . . I’m so sorry . . .

“With all due respect, doctor, you have overstepped,” Yuuri stated, voice sounding somewhat strained.

The doctor stood silent, apart from the creak of the wooden floorboards as he shifted from one foot to another.

“Once he leaves your care,” Yuuri told the doctor, voice indicating he would leave little room for argument, “my family will take him in until his own relatives can be found. I will make sure he heals well.”

I could hear a moment of silence born of hesitation, then the doctor’s deep sigh.

“Very well,” the man conceded, “I have done all I can for him here. If you ask your father to bring his cart around, I will help you move the man to your home.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Yuuri said, a certain sense of relief evident in his speech.

It was then that I felt the soft touch of a warm hand on my forehead, and I found myself pulled fully into the waking world, my eyelids fluttering open to see my savior, my childhood playmate, Yuuri, with his hand resting gently upon my head.

“Oh!” Yuuri exclaimed, seeing my eyes open, “He’s awake!”

Another face crowded into my vision, that of the doctor, I could presume, a man in his forties, his greying brown hair pulled back into a ponytail that fell over his shoulder as he leaned in above me, his thick eyebrows furrowed as he regarded me intently.

“Hello, young man,” he said, looking me over, “Can you understand us?”

I nodding, trying to shift myself to sit up on my elbows before the both of them stopped me, careful hands pressing me back down into the small bed I had been lying on.

“Don’t move too much!” Yuuri insisted, “You’re still weak!”

I obediently sank back down into the rather flat pillow by head had been resting upon, taking in a bit of my surroundings. The room was quite evidently the spare room in someone’s home, not a medical facility like a hospital, for which I found myself oddly grateful. Nearby, upon a dresser of red wood, sat an oil lamp of the classic shape mimicking a candle, the semi-transparent glass cover decorated with a painted rose. It produced a pleasant warm glow that cast light over the rest of the largely bare room, a light coat of dust speaking to its infrequent use.

I also found myself to be, mercifully, fully dressed. That too added to a certain level of comfort.

“Can you speak?” the doctor asked, drawing my attention to the two men who stood at my bedside.

That was an awfully good question; I didn’t know. I opened my mouth, and at first a distinctly disappointing, and likely somewhat frightening croaking sound emerged from between my lips, the sound of a voice that had never been used before, a voice that even its owner hadn’t heard before.

“Get him some water!” the doctor commanded and I saw Yuuri dart out of the room before the doctor turned back to me, “Don’t worry, some water will help.”

I nodded and smiled weakly, oddly uneasy in a room without Yuuri, the first person I’d met in my new life and the only I had yet recognized from my last. I didn’t have to wait long though, thankfully.

“Here,” Yuuri announced, entering the room and striding over to me, helping me to sit up enough to take a sip from the cup of water he’d brought me.

“Th . . . thanks . . .” I croaked out, the first word I’d ever spoken from these lips.

It seemed so oddly appropriate, as if it were fate even, that the first words I spoke were to this man, of whom I’d been so fond as a boy.

“You can speak!” Yuuri exclaimed, smiling widely, “That’s wonderful!”

“It is indeed,” the doctor chimed in, “Now, can you tell us anything of what happened to you?”

“N-no . . .”

I couldn’t tell them what had happened to me. When it came to how I got to the forest, in this living body, I could honestly say that I didn’t know. It was as much, if not more, a mystery to me as it was to them. As for the rest of it . . . as for that night, the night I froze beneath the pine tree, lost and alone in the midst of a storm, I could hardly tell them of that . . . especially Yuuri. 

How could I ever tell him such a thing? ‘I’m Marcel, the boy whose death shook your foundations,’ was hardly the sort of thing I could just blurt out. At best, they would think me mad . . . at worst . . . they would believe me . . .

“You don’t remember?” Yuuri asked, aiding me again for the umpteenth time, although he didn’t know it.

“No,” I replied, “I can’t remember a thing . . .”

“Do you remember your name?”

What was my name? I was no longer Marcel; he had died and I was reborn, but who was I now? A name, a name I liked, one that might suit the man I was now . . . Ah.

“My name is Viktor,” I answered, “I’m Viktor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing more awkward than realizing a stupid mistake you made as a child, that got you killed, also traumatized your closest childhood friend and likely altered the course of his life . . .


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri takes Viktor home . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Already had a bit of this chapter written, so I finished it up to have something to post while I'm working on my current commission. 
> 
> In other news, I'm desperately trying to distract myself from my anxiety over moving abroad, so if you're so inclined, come on into the comments and tell me what's going on with you. I'd love to get to know y'all better, as well as to hear about anything other than how I need to pack a year's worth of belongings into two suitcases . . .

Michele and his compatriots found no sign of my attackers, they reported, upon their return from their forest expedition. 

There was nothing amiss besides some flattened pine needles and crumbling leaves where I had been found beneath the pine tree, and some broken brambles through which Yuuri had battled his way over to me where I lay. They searched the road as well, upon finding nothing to remark upon in the forest, but there was no sign that anyone had passed that way in the last couple of hours, apart from Yuuri’s footprints and the drag marks that served to mark my own shambling steps.

In part, this was a good thing, for it meant that no unfortunate, innocent people would be blamed for what they presumed had happened to me, but on the other hand, it gave me absolutely no clues as to how I had come to be there, in a physical sense. Perhaps I shouldn’t have wanted to, as they say, ‘look a gift horse in the mouth,’ but I couldn’t help my curiosity. After all, I had returned from death in a manner that, as far as I knew, no one else had ever done. And I hadn’t even the faintest idea how I’d done it . . .

“How are you feeling?” Yuuri asked me as he entered my room again, returning from talking over my predicament with the men of the search party.

It seemed they had deemed me and my circumstances a complete mystery, to be solved when it was meant to be solved, and no sooner. A conclusion which, were I honest, worked quite well in my favor. Fewer questions asked meant fewer questions I would be unable to satisfactorily answer.

“A bit better after water and a rest, thank you,” I answered him, voice still somewhat croaky from lack of use.

“The doctor told me that there’s nothing more he can do for you here. Would you like to stay here, or come to my home? My door is open and my family would be happy to have you.”

“Could I really? Stay at your home?” I asked, not wanting to reveal that I’d heard his previous conversation with the good doctor.

“Of course!” he told me, smiling down like some sort of angelic presence.

“But I am a stranger to you . . .” I protested weakly, with no real intention of going against the idea.

“That’s what being a decent person is all about though, isn’t it?” he said, leaning over me and placing a warm hand upon my shoulder, “Giving the benefit of the doubt, sharing what you have . . . I really would be pleased to have you as my guest.”

“Thank you,” I responded truthfully, “I wouldn’t want to take up space here where someone else could at any time need it more than I.”

“Well, I’ll have my father pull our cart around front and the doctor and I will help you get to the porch. I don’t mean to assume or cause offence, but you don’t look like you’re up to much walking right now.”

“No offence taken,” I smiled back, “I feel more like a newborn foal than a strongman.”

“Hehe” he chuckled softly, “I’ll go out front and see if things are ready, then I’ll come back for you.”

“Alright,” I answered, watching him stand up fully again and walk out of the room.

Listening to his retreating footsteps, a mixture of relief and guilt flooded my mind. Relief that I would be able to go see how my childhood friend’s life had turned out after I had left it, but also guilt over the fact that I had left him alone, without even the chance to say goodbye. I wanted to see what his home was like now, what his family was like now, but I also feared seeing them . . . because what if the effects of what I’d done were there, still, visible and tangible? I couldn’t be sure how I would react, whether I could maintain the illusion of being a total stranger with a case of head trauma-induced amnesia when faced with all of that.

When Yuuri returned, not a minute later, I tried to steel myself, to school my face into exclusively that of the character I now had to play. Well, play . . . or become. This was a new life, I was a new person, and who could yet say who that new person was? I’d chosen the name Viktor, but that was all I knew about myself, as the man I’d woken up to be. Why couldn’t I be this harmless amnesiac? At least until I figured out for myself who I had become in this new existence of mine.

“Here we go,” he said, extricating me from the covers of the bed and looping my arm over his shoulder to begin hauling me upright.

I felt somewhat better, somewhat steadier on my feet than I had when Yuuri had brought me here, but in all honesty, not by much, and I was thankful for his strength as he put his arm about my waist and took my weight upon himself, maneuvering me step by step towards the front door of the doctor’s home. 

Stepping across the threshold, I was met with the unexpected delight of the balmy night air, gentle and soothing as it caressed my face. I’d been awake for so long, looking up at the sky, my mind churning in its dreamlike state, but I hadn’t been able to feel a thing until this morning when I awoke beneath the pine tree, not the ground beneath me, nor the wind that swept over me. I existed out of time, it seemed, and neither the wind nor the earth had known I was there; they couldn’t interact with me, nor I with them until today. 

When I’d first found myself living again, I had been too overcome by confusion, discomfort, and fear to really notice the simpler details of the world around me: the feel of the wind, of the grass against my bare feet, they had all escaped me. But now, now that I’d had some time to process what had come to pass, I could finally feel it all as it was, the pure joy of it.

I could see Yuuri’s family’s cart stopped next to the porch steps with a man, Yuuri’s father, sitting at the front, holding the reins of their horse, whose duty it was to pull us along. Yuuri held me tight as we descended the mere three steps to the grass-covered earth in front of the cart, and I couldn’t repress the shudder than ran through me at the sensation of the grass against my feet, not a shudder of revulsion, quite the opposite, but it appeared that Yuuri misread my demeanor.

“Are you cold?” he asked me, concerned, as he tightened his arm around my waist and gently rubbed his hand across my ribs in some attempt to generate heat through friction.

“No, thank you,” I shook my head and cooperated as Yuuri then hauled me up into the back of the cart, taking a moment to get me good and settled before walking around to the front of the cart.

“We’re all set, dad,” I heard him say to the man at the front, who was indeed Yuuri’s father, and a moment later, the cart started to move, jostling me gently as it made its slow way along the path to the road.

I looked about, suddenly nervous that Yuuri wasn’t in the cart with me, but then I spotted him walking alongside the cart. He must have seen me regard him, for he then, unprompted, spoke to reassure me.

“I would sit with you,” he told me, “but our horse is getting on a bit in years, and I don’t want to give her too much to pull along.”

“Ah,” I nodded my comprehension, still admittedly somewhat disappointed to not be so near to him.  
It was foolish, I knew that well, to want so strongly and so soon to be close to someone who ought to be a complete stranger, but I couldn’t help it. As much as I tried not to, I couldn’t help the memories that sprang unbidden to my mind whenever I looked at Yuuri. 

The way we used to play hide and seek in the garden and at the edge of the woods, and I’d usually let him win because my mother had told me it was my duty as the elder of us to make Yuuri happy. I was pretty sure that he could tell that I let him win, but he never said anything of it, so perhaps not. 

The way he used to smile at me when i brought him an interesting leaf or a snail shell that I’d found, eyes, shining, his face all round with baby fat and dimpled cheeks, and only a fraction of the teeth he had now. 

I had loved playing with him, but looking back, I don’t think I ever fully appreciated how wonderful his company really was in those years, the best years of my youth . . . the only years I’d had . . .

He was younger even than I; had he understood, when I left, that I didn’t really want to go? Did he know that I tried to find my way back? That I struggled to get home through the snow until my frozen limbs gave up on me? Did he know that I cared for him, with all the honesty and innocence of childhood? Those questions I would just have to leave unanswered, I supposed unhappily as I swayed in the back of the cart, looking down onto the top of Yuuri’s dark-haired head. I could hardly ask him now; they weren’t the sorts of questions that this stranger would ask, and I dreaded the thought of him realizing who I’d been and how I knew him. 

It took about fifteen minutes, the wagon moving as slow as it was, to reach Yuuri’s house, a small but clean thing, respectable and tidy, clearly the design of Yuuri’s mother, with the same front garden that I remembered, albeit with some different flowers growing there. The exterior of the structure was somewhat more weathered now than when I’d seen it last, but overall it was the same house, with even the same people inside.

I would say that the house felt like a spectre of the past to me, but I suppose the reality was quite the opposite. 

The ghost was coming home . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any thoughts? Predictions? Theories?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor makes a mistake . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been doing some writing since I'm stuck in bed with a leg injury, and thus unable to explore Paris beyond the view from my window . . .

“Oh look at you, poor thing!” exclaimed Yuuri’s mother as he helped me in through their front door, rushing towards us and taking me into a very unexpected embrace.

I admit I floundered for a moment, unused to such physical affections, particularly on the part of a virtual stranger, but I managed to gather myself enough to not display my surprise, if not enough to return the embrace. It was the first real hug I’d been given since I died, and for quite some time before then. Over a decade . . . My parents were never particularly keen on hugs or kisses, at least not since I’d grown big enough to remember, considering it unnecessary at best and uncouth at worst. 

“Careful, mama,” Yuuri warned her, steadying me as she let go, “He’s still weak. We don’t want him toppling over in the doorway.”

“Goodness, I’m sorry,” she apologized, “I didn’t hurt you, did I, son?”

“Oh, no, I’m fine,” I assured her, smiling, but leaning a little more heavily than I’d prefer to on Yuuri’s arm.

“A bit of an overstatement,” Yuuri chuckled good-naturedly, hefting me upright with the arm around my waist as I drooped a little, “but I admire your optimism. Let’s get you something to eat and then get you settled in the guest room.”

“Oh yes!” Yuuri’s mother exclaimed, bustling off deeper into the house, presumably to the kitchen, if the wafting scent of cooking food was any indication. 

“My mother is an excellent cook,” Yuuri told me, leading me forward, into the house, to a small, cozy dining room.

There sat a table I vaguely recalled, although it looked smaller to me now than it did then, a heavy but elegant piece of furniture carved of dark wood and clearly well-used and loved for a generation or three. It bore upon it the marks of decades of use, of knives dropped, of plates skidded across its surface, and I knew at least one or two must have been left by me in my past life, although I couldn’t remember any exact occurrences. But that is the way it is when you’re a child: everything passes in the blink of an eye, the world rotating faster than it did for adults, each day a mere flash before the next began. 

When you’re a child, you’re too young to fully appreciate what you have. You’re simply unaware of so much that goes on around you; how could you hope to appreciate it fully?

Yuuri deposited me in a chair, and I blushed a bit to realize that I held onto him a moment longer than he did onto me, reluctant to let go of my lifeline, my one landmark in a foreign landscape. Removing my hands from his person, I put them on the top of the table, running my fingers distractedly over its surface, feeling its dips, dents, and scratches, the grain of the wood polished away by years of hands like mine, doing what I was doing now. 

“I’ll just go see if she needs any help,” Yuuri said with a soft, reassuring smile, “I’ll be back in a moment.”

My reluctance to be left alone must have been evident on my face, given the look he gave me as he walked away, towards the kitchen. A part of me shouted at me to school my face, to not appear so vulnerable, but another part of me hardly cared. Of anyone in this new world, Yuuri was a person I could trust to mean me no ill, someone around whom I could expose my discomfort, the background level of fear I felt, faced as I was by so many things unknown. 

A sudden clattering sound roused me from the sort of stupor I’d fallen into, the sound of silverware and ceramic dishes meeting, as Yuuri and his mother re-entered the dining room, him following as she bustled in, a dish full of food in hand.

“There you are,” she exhaled, setting the dish full of food that I didn’t recognize, but which smelled delicious, before me, “Eat up and get strong, like a good lad.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Katsuki,” I expressed my gratitude with sincerity, the scent of cooked meat and vegetables drawing out a hunger that had until then been dormant.

I took up the cutlery she provided for me and did my best to eat slowly, carefully, so as to avoid indigestion or appearing rude. I felt positively ravenous, but then I supposed that was nothing to be surprised by, as this was the first meal I’d had with this new stomach. The only things that had passed my lips up until that point were the air I breathed and the water I’d been given to drink in the doctor’s home. 

“Call me Hiroko, please,” she responded, beaming, and it occurred to me that smiling seemed to be her face’s permanent state . . . that too felt somewhat familiar.

She’d always been a cheerful woman. Kind.

As I tucked into the meal, my skin crawled as I suddenly realized that Yuuri was giving me a look, an odd look . . . A look which he smoothed from his face as he saw me looking. Perhaps it was an unconscious expression, not really signifying anything at all, for once it departed, it became impossible to tell if it had ever been there at all, and I began to doubt that I had in fact seen something other than his customary pleasant expression upon his visage.

All remained well as I finished eating, exchanging pleasantries with Mrs. Katsuki -Hiroko- in between bites. She seemed very much the sort to identify herself by her role as a mother first and foremost, all those significantly younger than herself automatically taking on the role of a child in her eyes. Nurturing, I thought, would be perhaps the best word to describe her. 

Indeed, she was terribly concerned that I eat enough, encouraging me to take as much as I needed and offering more, should the food on my plate not be enough to fill me. I assured her that it was and her focus moved almost instantly to the dark circles she told me resided beneath my eyes, a sign that I was in need of rest. She called upon Yuuri to support me again as I left my chair, leading me out of the dining room and down a hall to the guest room. 

While still very obviously not the bedroom of one of the family, the room was more inviting, more homey than that in the doctor’s house. There was a lamp, itself not unlike that in the doctor’s guest room, but it sat upon a side table next to the bed, and the dresser by the wall had upon it a variety of trinkets and a couple framed photographs, presumably of relatives, their serious but pleasant faces standing sentry over the room.

The bed had upon it a quilt, probably made by Hiroko or perhaps her mother. It was an item into which much time and energy had quite clearly been poured, an item that had been well-loved, its colors slightly faded by the light that in the daytime would spill over the bed from the small window of the far wall. Yuuri and his mother tucked me into the bed under that quilt, fussing over me in a way that both embarrassed me and warmed my heart. 

Such caring people . . . 

After ensuring the I had need of nothing else, they left me in the room to sleep for the night, the door cracked open, presumably so they could hear me if anything were to happen in the night. They’d been so kind, I didn’t dare ask anything more, but if I’d had my druthers, I’d have wanted to stay in a room with Yuuri, rather than be alone . . . Being alone held a certain fear for me, intense and profound, one that I felt difficult to articulate in the confines of my own mind, let alone verbally aloud.

I had been alone when I died, you see . . .

I lay there in the dark for several long minutes, hands fisting in the soft material of the quilt, holding it tight against myself, listening to the quiet sounds of a household settling in for the night. Yuuri’s father came in, having apparently been seeing to the animals while Yuuri and Hiroko fed me and put me to bed. He left the hall, going to his and Hiroko’s own room, but then I heard the whispered sound of Yuuri calling to his mother before she could go to bed.

“Mama?” Yuuri’s voice came from the darkness, speaking low as if he’d rather not be heard by any other than his mother, but loud enough to suggest that he assumed me asleep.

“What is it, sweetie?” came her response, matching his volume and tone.

“When we sat Viktor down to eat . . . uh . . . he called you Mrs. Katsuki, but . . . We exchanged first names when he first was able to speak, but, uh, I never told him our last name.”

“Didn’t you?” Hiroko asked, confusion clear in her voice.

“With everything else going on, I forgot to make a formal introduction,” Yuuri explained, hushed, “So how did he know?”

“Yuuri,” his mother chided, and I heard the sound of her skirt swishing, as if she had walked up to him, “I know this is all an upset to normality, but you mustn’t be paranoid. Someone else must have told him about you while you were out of the room. You weren’t by his side the whole time, were you?”

“No,” he exhaled, “I was in and out several times . . .”

“Someone else surely told him of you,” Hiroko assured her son, before a pause fell over them and she spoke again with a different, more careful tone, “Yuuri, darling, it can’t have escaped you how similar he looks to . . . well, you know. It’s not surprising at all that that might bring back old pains . . . and might affect your thinking.”

“What do you-?” he began before she gently cut him off.

“Sweetie, it struck me too, when I saw him, like a fist squeezing my heart. He looks so like him, I couldn’t help the emotion it brought out, I fairly forgot myself when I saw his face, his hair, so similar . . .” She sighed gently before continuing, “I can see the temptation to think them the same, but they are not. Don’t look for clues where there are none; it will only break your heart.”

Yuuri didn’t say anything more, but in my mind’s eye I could see his shoulders droop and the way his gaze fell to the floor between his feet. 

I hated the way his silence sounded, the self-doubt and grief that filled the quiet hallway as his mother bade him goodnight and went to her own bed. I should have been relieved at how Hiroko quieted his suspicions about me, gently telling him not to let my similarity to Marcel cloud his judgement, not to bring up hopes that could only be dashed . . . I should have been relieved, but instead it only hurt, an ache in my heart, for him, for all that he must have suffered, and for myself, that I couldn’t fulfill his hopes, couldn’t tell him the truth of it all. 

We both of us were to suffer, and I could save neither him nor myself from it.

All that being said, all my hopes and regrets expressed . . . I really had to be more careful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Viktor . . . you done hecked up . . .


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor wakes up in Yuuri's house and they have a bit of a chat. It starts out pleasant . . . but gets a bit sad . . .
> 
> (reminder that there is a happy ending, you just gotta wade through some angst to get there)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo, guess who hasn't left her two room apartment in four days? It's me. I'm still mobility-impaired, even as I'm trying to settle in here at university, so I've been doing a lot of sitting in bed, and a lot of writing, hoping I'll heal somewhat before classes start.
> 
> Feel free to come say hi in the comments.

I eventually fell asleep, despite the constant anxious buzzing of my mind, in the darkness of Yuuri’s guest room, and when I awoke, it was to a stream of bright daylight falling across my face. 

For a brief panicked moment, I feared that I had woken up once again lying on the forest floor, staring at the sky, and that the last day or so had been a dream within the long dream I’d dreamt for a decade or more, so I was relieved when my vision cleared, to see a small window to be the source of the light. I was not dead again, or at least, if I was, my dream within a dream still continued . . .

No one came to wake me, so I slowly gathered my strength, beginning by simply sitting up in bed, which was somewhat harder to do by myself than I remembered. Still feeling foreign in my own body, I suppose. Once upright, albeit unsteadily, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, at which point I realized that, not only was I still wearing the same clothes I’d woken up in in the doctor’s house, but that there was nothing else for me to change into . . . and I’d really have liked to change. I must have had nightmares I could not recall, for in the night I had sweat through my shirt, and I now felt sticky and more than a little unsightly. 

Perhaps I could ask Yuuri or his father if I could borrow a set of clothes, just while I wash the ones I’d been given . . . I didn’t even know who they had belonged to before I woke up wearing them, I realized abruptly. Whose were they, and would they want them back? Presumably the idea was to find this lost stranger’s family and return him to them as quickly as possible, so no one here would need to give him their charity, but as I had not existed before yesterday, there would be no family to find . . . Unless . . . 

Were my own family still living here, in the house next door? I’d been so focused on the mystery of what had happened, and on Yuuri himself, that I hadn’t thought about it . . . or I’d subconsciously chosen not to. It was one thing to see my childhood friend again after returning from death, but my mother? My father? My grandmother? Were they still here? Were they yet living? I feared what I might find, were I to seek the answer . . .

I stood shakily from the bed and walked over to the window, which I discovered to overlook the neighboring house, my house, the one I had been born into. But it was not exactly the same house. The garden was different, my mother’s flowers missing, and the wind chimes she’d hung out front on the porch were also gone. Now that I’d wondered about it, I would have to ask . . . but I’d yet to figure out how to make it come up at all naturally.

Holding onto the wall as I moved, I managed to slowly shuffle my tired body over to the door, turning the handle and opening it with the gentle creak of a lesser used door, only to be confronted by the startled face of Yuuri, a breakfast tray balanced in his arms that I could only suppose had been prepared for me.

“Oh my goodness,” I exclaimed, quickly stepping back out of the way and promptly having to correct for the dizziness my movement had brought me, “I’m so sorry!”

“Careful!” he said, shifting the tray to one hand and reaching the other out to steady me with a gentle hold on my elbow, “No need for you to apologize; I’m sorry for startling you. Let’s sit you back down, alright?”

I might have argued against his suggestion, rather enjoying the feeling of standing, of stretching out my legs, but as another wave of dizziness washed over me, I realized I’d little choice but to agree, nodding my head and allowing myself to be led back over to the bed, upon which I sat. I swung my legs back up onto the mattress and shuffled back under the covers, gratefully accepting when Yuuri set the tray laden with breakfast foods down upon my lap.

“Thank you,” I told him, looking up into his face with a smile, “I appreciate this.”

“Of course,” Yuuri responded as he stepped away, over to a chair that sat in the far corner of the room, dragging it over close to the bed and taking a seat, “How are you feeling today?”

“Quite well . . .” I said, kind of trailing off even as I said the words, as how I felt, how I was doing, was rather up in the air at the moment.

“Can you remember anything more than you could yesterday?” he inquired, gesturing for me to begin eating with an open palm.

I picked up the knife and fork, holding them properly as I’d been taught, and took a moment to think my strategy over before realizing that I didn’t really have one, all that I could do was deny all knowledge and rely on the assumptions of others to cover for me. I could claim a head injury had robbed me of my memories, and it would be plausible for those memories to not return. 

“No . . . I can’t remember a thing,” I mumbled before bringing a piece of omelette to my mouth, looking down to my plate rather than looking him in the eye, something which felt a bit too ambitious at that juncture, especially after what I had overheard the night before.

“Nothing?”

“I mean,” I paused in between bites, “I remember some things, simple things, things anyone might know . . . I know my name, I know which direction the sun rises in, I know how to tie my shoes . . . but other things still escape me. I can’t recall my family or my home, I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t even know what year it is . . .”

“1913.”

“Hm?” I made a sound of inquiry, looking up at him.

“I can’t help you with most of those things,” he told me, appearing genuinely regretful of his limited ability to help, “but at least I can tell you the year. It’s 1913. In the month of May.”

“Oh . . .” 

It had been a bit over a decade then, that I lay on the forest floor. That would make me . . . Twenty-two now, and Yuuri now himself twenty years old. Time had changed us both, and it was frankly difficult to say which of us had been changed more. Certainly, i had experienced death and revival, but Yuuri had gone through school. He’d met people, he’d learned things in those intervening years, while I had nothing to think upon but that which I had already learned. I could reason things out, increasing my understanding in that way, but I had no way to know, for example, about how to mend my clothes, which I had not yet been taught, or about any of the events that had taken place in the world after my death. 

I had only matured only in the most basic capacity, adult in mind but not in knowledge. I was an adult, but one who had somehow skipped the entire process of growing up . . . I really was dependent on the kindness of others; imagined head wound aside, I could not hope to properly care for myself, regardless of circumstance.

“It must be frightening . . .” Yuuri said, startlingly me from my thoughts, “To find yourself suddenly lost in the world . . .”

“It is,” I agreed, quite honestly, with a sort of bitter smile.

It was frightening, terrifying even, despite the joy and relief at receiving new life. I was released from the long dream, but I was released into a world about which I knew virtually nothing, all knowledge that I had now out of date by a decade or more, and who could say if that which my ten-year-old self believed to be true was ever very accurate?

It was a world entirely composed of unknowns, and I would need help to navigate it.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri told me, reaching a hand out to rest lightly upon my forearm, “that this happened to you.”

“I appreciate your sympathy, but I’m not,” I replied, causing him to look up into my eyes, startled by my response.

“Hm?”

“I can’t remember what happened before you found me, but that’s not to say that I’ve lost everything. I don’t know what my situation was, how pleasant or harsh my circumstances, so it could be that this event was a blessing, albeit in a strange guise,” I explained, “I may not have lost a family, a good life, because I may not even have had one. All I know is where I am and what is happening now, and that both are quite pleasant, and I am grateful for it.”

“That’s a remarkably optimistic take on things.”

“Well,” I chuckled, smiling up at him, “perhaps in my last life, i was an optimist. My inherent characteristics, my nature, that should transfer over, shouldn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” he agreed, returning the smile in a way that brought me profound relief. 

I got the feeling that he wasn’t in a particular hurry to find my family and be rid of me anyway. It was an awfully nice thought.

Yuuri sat with me while I finished eating, and to my continued relief, he let the topic of my memory and my origins go, moving on to other subjects. We talked about the weather, just for starters, but as we went on, I was able to learn a bit more about the grown-up Yuuri, about his likes and dislikes, the way his tastes have changed since I knew him. I had to suppress a shudder as he told me that his favorite season was summer now, hot and dry, because it was the furthest thing from ice and snow there could be. 

He used to like the late autumn; he loved to play in the leaves that had fallen from the trees, and he loved the way spiderwebs looked when covered in a light frost . . . but not now. It didn’t take altogether too much guessing for me to figure out why he didn’t anymore.

I simply nodded my agreement, expressing my love for the warmth, because to be frank . . . I wasn’t so fond of the chill anymore either.

He told me about the town, about the people I’d already met and those I hadn’t, and it rather struck me when he described how, over the past several years, his hometown had drastically decreased in size, with so many people moving away to the big city and not coming back. I wondered if that included my family, so I asked, as casually as I could manage, about his next door neighbors. The house next door, I told him, had so little personality to it compared to his own home, so I’d been wondering if it had been left vacant as the people left town.

He looked at me a little strangely for a moment, but the odd expression quickly passed from his face, and he told me that most of the family who’d lived there had moved away a long time ago, leaving only the grandmother, who had refused to leave the house she’d spent so much of her life in . . . And, he told me, looking into my eyes, that she’d fretted about leaving the house empty, in case her grandson came home . . .

I could see the suspicion in my eyes and I could feel the way he dug at me, and indeed I began to wonder if the notion that I was the resurrected ghost of his childhood friend would really be such an unbearable shock to his system . . . But even if he wanted to hear it, I realized that I myself wasn’t ready to tell the tale, not yet . . . It was still too much of a mystery, and the fear and loss ran too deep to speak of so soon.

It hurt to hear about my grandmother . . . either she knew about ghosts like I had become, or, more likely, she had gone a bit dotty after I was gone. I feared what I might discover if I were to try to find out. 

Out of a lack of a notion of what I ought to do, I continued as I had been. I feigned complete ignorance.

“Oh, no,” I said, in the voice of the concerned, but not overly concerned, stranger, “Did he run away?”

He gave me an odd look again, but a somewhat different one than previously, as if he were now confused, and somewhat guilty at his earlier suspicion. I hated to see that conflict in his eyes, but at that moment there was little I could do to resolve it.

“No,” he muttered, voice going slow, and sad, “He died.”

“Oh . . .” I couldn’t think of what else to say, nor did I think a stranger such as the one I was pretending to be would know any better, so I settled for, “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” he told me, as a cloud passed before the sun, dimming the light that shone in through the room’s one window, casting a shadow over Yuuri’s solemn face, “Me too.”

Oh, Yuuri . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri is growing suspicious . . . Viktor doesn't know how to stop lying . . .


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A budding romance? Viktor has trouble telling the difference between simple friendship, kindness, and romantic affection, and the unknown weighs heavy on his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a short chapter this time, y'all, cuz this was kinda the most natural place to put a chapter break. A little exposition and context before stuff really starts happening.

It’s curiously easy, I found, to slip into the flow of time, even after so long a spell out of it, to weave oneself into the tapestry, the pattern of daily life. One could claim it to be humanity’s greatest feature, that exceptional adaptability, and I for one was grateful for it as it allowed me to sink softly and peacefully into the routines of my new life. The townspeople remained unable to find any friends or relatives of the stranger who’d come to them by such unusual means, not even when they enquired at the police station in the city, and my supposedly lost memories did not return to me, so I simply stayed with them, with the intent of eventually properly becoming one of them. Like I ought to have been.

Yuuri’s family was kind enough to allow me to stay with them, but I hated to feel as though I were imposing, so as I grew stronger, I began to help out about the house as much as I was able. Hiroko still would not allow me to go out to help the other men in the fields. insisting that I could not possibly be well enough for such rough work, not so long as my mind was scrambled so. I felt somewhat inadequate, but I knew she only meant to be kind and protective, and I was assuaged by the thought that it may not have been simply kindness, but that she didn’t much like to be without company in the daytime, when Yuuri went to help his father. 

She taught me many of the things I had missed out on learning, including a few that I probably wouldn’t have been taught anyway, having been born a boy, but I was happy to learn all of it, for all of it was useful, and somewhat miraculous to me. I learned how to cook, how to care for a house, how to mend a shoe or a jacket, how to sew on a button, and all the while I marvelled at the workings of my own hands, still so fascinated, still so pleased to have them. And it pleased me, I must say, when I was at last able to mend Yuuri’s torn shirt by myself instead of his mother, it gave me a sense of satisfaction I didn’t care to fully explain. At last I could look out for him, even in such a small way, and the smile I got with his thanks caused a warmth to bloom within my chest, a warmth that just sort of stayed, a fixture beneath my breastbone that warmed me from the inside out.

He would still give me odd looks, upon occasion, but the sense of suspicion, of perhaps hurt, did seem to fade from them with time. We would converse by the fire in the evenings, and our talks would become freer when his parents went to bed and we’d stay up until the wee hours. I got to know him, properly know him, as the man he was now, and not as the child that I had once known. It sounded perhaps silly to me, even within my own head, but he, with all his multitude of faults, was nothing short of perfection to me. 

I remember when he first began to take my hand in his in situations where I didn’t require his aid to stand or walk. Sitting close to each other one night in front of the fire, not really for the warmth, but for the curious allure that fire has by its nature, our hands strayed close to each other where they rested on the floor, and it was almost involuntary, the way our fingers tangled together so easily, as if it were an old, practiced habit, and not the first time. It wasn’t something we spoke on, not even as it grew to be a habit, taking comfort in the feel of each other’s warm palms. It wasn’t exactly something we could freely do when out and about in town, but in his home and in his garden, our hands would naturally entwine, almost like ivy, growing together . . .

When we did go out, however, I got into the habit of taking his elbow when offered. The perception of my frailty, an assumption no doubt encouraged by Hiroko keeping me from the harder physical labor, served to make such a thing entirely above suspicion, simply a fact of life in the eyes of all the others. I was weaken and could become dizzy, so it was only wise for me to hold Yuuri’s arm when we were out, and I’ll admit that from time to time I would play up the notion, leaning more heavily upon Yuuri as if I were struggling to stand, but in truth I did it merely to be closer. I could be certain that Yuuri knew of my playacting in these situations, but he didn’t appear to mind, taking my weight without a word, and a soft, almost imperceptible smile upon his lips. 

It brought an ache to my heart every time, but I didn’t resent it in the slightest, the pain of it not altogether unpleasant, not when he smiled at me like that. 

It was a hard thing to admit to myself, but when it finally came down to it, over the space of a couple months, it could hardly be avoided: I loved him, a love greater than that of a brother or a dear friend. The sight of him spurred my heart to beat faster, and his touch became something of a strange addiction, leaving me oddly unsettled if I hadn’t the opportunity to take his hand or his arm at some point during the day, going so far as to trouble my sleep at times. Now I had two things I couldn’t say to him, and the pain of it was doubled, without any of the sweet relief that his smile gave me along with the ache. 

I might have once been frightened or ashamed with myself for loving another man, but I had died and grown up in death, and the fear of hellfire and an omnipotent, vengeful god could do nothing to me now but make me sad for the fright that others, those true believers, must live in. I feared no god nor devil, but I did fear rejection, feared it with every fiber of my being. Yuuri was quite literally my life now, and I couldn’t imagine a different life away from here and away from him, somewhere surrounded by strangers and the chill of loneliness. I couldn’t bear to think that a life apart was what I’d been brought back for . . .

So I kept my peace, and tried to express my love in the ways that I could, by cooking for him, by mending his clothes, by brushing his hair as we sat by the fireside, and I hoped that my feelings were conveyed and acknowledged . . . though I dared not hope for them to be returned, not to the same degree, lest I break my brand new heart . . . I forced myself to remain contented with what I already had and not build up expectations for something more. Whether he noticed the change in me or not, I couldn’t tell, for if he did, he didn’t overtly show it. He simply continued to smile, to hold my hand, to let me take his arm . . . but he didn’t speak of it, and he didn’t try to do anything more.

And once again I found myself in a sort of limbo, caught between two worlds in a way. The world where he loved me as I loved him . . . and the world where he didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: TENSION
> 
> wink wonk, take that as you will


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor is forced to face the house next door, his home in his last life, and its single remaining inhabitant . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My schedule defies all explanation, but I am still here, still updating . . .

We continued on in that uneasy appearance of peace, dancing around each other yet unable to pull away, much in the pitiful fashion that a moth courts a flame. The longer it went on, the more difficult it became for me to meet his eye, fearful that he should see the conflict that lay therein and that his realization of the depth of my feelings for him might disrupt the balance. There was, of course, the possibility that an upset to the balance could swing in the direction of my wishes; I was aware of this, and yet the fear of the equally possible swing towards turmoil and rejection kept me from taking the chance, kept me hovering on the periphery of Yuuri’s warmth, like that poor little moth, always just outside the sphere of light.

However much I endeavored to be content in my place and circumstances, the struggle of heartache appeared to come to me far more naturally, much to my frustration and chagrin.

Yuuri knew that something was amiss, I could tell, I could see it in the way he looked at me, reaching out so hesitantly, as though afraid that I might reject him, as if such a thing were even possible, as if I ever could bring myself do such a thing . . . I wished again, for the umpteenth time, that I could explain myself, my actions and the reasons behind them, but I couldn’t fathom how without revealing absolutely everything . . . and that, I feared, might destroy him.

This wasn’t fair to either of us, I knew, and I knew as well that this tension couldn’t go on, couldn’t continue indefinitely, and I lived in fear of the day the taut thread that bound us would snap. Under such circumstances, it was difficult to give the appearance of satisfaction and serenity, all while waiting for the thing that would break us to finally arrive.

So occupied was I by the strain and unease growing between Yuuri and that I rather forgot about everything else that I had to hide, the other parts I had to play, for audiences other than my sweet, distressed maybe-love. One day, the past that I’d been so distracted from caught up with me, seizing me with an inescapable grip in the form of Hiroko asking me for a favor, one that I couldn’t reasonably refuse.

“Viktor, dear?” I heard her calling for me from the kitchen, along with the sounds of dishes clinking together and the clattering of metal pans.

“Yes, ma'am?” I responded, making my way to the kitchen to see Hiroko, apparently attempting to extricate one specific pan from a drawer full of stacked pans and pots, the mark of an ambitious home chef whose kitchen does not match her ambition with its size.

“Hiroko!,” she chided good-naturedly, as this particular interaction had rather become our habit; me sticking to honorifics, and her telling me off for it, “But could you do something for me, love?”

“Of course,” I responded eagerly, bound by my own personal desire to be of use as much as the remaining sense of obligation I felt towards the family that had welcomed me so warmly.

“Good lad!” she said approvingly, to the sound of another clattering of dishes, “I’ve made a coffee cake for the old dear next door, and ordinarily I’d deliver it myself, but I lost track of the date and I’ve got to bake something before Mari gets here.”

“Goodness, that’s today?” I gasped, covering my distress at having to go next door to my old home with surprise at Mari’s visit, because to be honest, I’d forgotten about that as well.

“Lost track of the day too, did you? I could have sworn today was a Wednesday, but the calendar disagrees,” Hiroko said, standing up and placing a warm cake tin swaddled in potholders of chunky knit into my hands, “Now be a dear and take that across. Perhaps sit down and talk with her a while? The poor thing doesn’t really go out these days, and I know she’ll enjoy the company of a nice young person.”

“Oh, of course,” I agreed, trying to hide my hesitation, but not well enough to fool the motherly instinct to recognize fibbing that Hiroko was so very good with; mercifully, while she recognized my attempts to mislead, she invariably misinterpreted my motivations for doing so.

“You needn’t be shy, Viktor,” she told me, “Granny’s a bit odd, but she’s a lovely lady, and I’m sure she has all sorts of stories to tell you if you just show you’ve got a willing ear. Now, get along, and I don’t expect to see you back here within the hour, you understand?”

“Absolutely, Hiroko,” I agreed, smiling despite myself as she physically turned me about, directing me towards the door and giving me a gentle shove in the appropriate direction.

Stepping outside, carefully cradling the warm tin in my hands, I moved towards the neighboring house with somewhat lingering paces, taking in what had become of my home. I’d seen it from the outside dozens of times since that first morning I awoke in the Katsuki home and peeked out through the window, and yet every time it struck me as just as strange as it had been the first time I caught sight of it. 

It was, ultimately, four walls with a roof on top, not too different from any house around here; the only thing that made it the slightest bit different, the slightest bit significant, was that I’d been born there, that I’d taken my first breaths and my first steps, of my last life at any rate, within those walls. It was familiar, and yet so foreign, the changes slight, but their effect upon the overall presence of the house profound. The garden was no longer the manicured thing that I remembered; the only flowers that yet grew in the flower beds were the sort that were inclined to grow whether one wants them to or not, rather than the sort that needs constant care and requires some amount of a gardener’s passion. The gentle tinkling music of the wind chimes that had wafted on the air from the porch in the days of my childhood had gone silent, the chimes having been taken down at some point, recent or distant.

The creaking of the porch steps were also somewhat different than I recalled, having grown louder with the intervening years, protesting my weight dramatically as I stepped up to the door, hesitating a moment before giving the wood a gentle knock.

“Hello?” I called out, half hoping that Granny, my grandmother, wasn’t in the mood to receive visitors, feeling altogether unprepared to see her.

“It’s unlocked,” came the response from somewhere inside, the voice kindly but rough with age, “Come in.”

Doing as I had been bidden, I balanced the cake tin in my left hand, placing my right on the doorknob and gently turning it, starting slightly as it swung inwards. I had been afraid that the interior would be dark and dismal, perfumed by dying flowers and the musty scent of years old dust, with cobwebs hanging in the high corners of the rooms; a place of neglect and the bone-deep sorrow that accompanied it. As I entered, however, I was struck by relief as I took in the space, clean and well-lit by daylight, bid entry by open curtains of softly drifting white cloth embroidered with a floral design. There were flowers on the windowsill, but they were recently picked, still smelling of summer sunshine, their petals yet bright.

Granny was sitting in her parlor, in a cushioned armchair that I remembered well, having spent hours climbing all over it as a very small child, in the way that young children are wont to do. It was positioned to face the window that overlooked the far side of the garden and the woods beyond, currently a sea of varying shades of green, from which emerged the occasional call of a bird and the constant chirping of crickets, audible even indoors. She turned to watch me as I came in, and odd or dotty as she might be, the sharpness of her gaze had dulled little over the years, raking over me in such a way that left me feeling rather shredded.

“Hello, ma’am,” I said again, raising up the cake tin to show her, “My name is Viktor. Mrs. Katsuki asked me to bring this over for you.”

She stared at me, words not as yet forthcoming.

“It’s a lovely coffee cake,” I went on, deeply uncomfortable in the silence that filled the parlor, growing more ominous to me as it stretched on.

“You’re the fellow they found in the woods,” she said, more a statement than a question.

“Yes,” I confirmed, shifting awkwardly under the weight of her eyes.

“Well,” she sighed, settling back into the cushions of her chair, her gaze becoming less intense, “Go on through and put it on the kitchen table. There’s plates and a cake knife in the cupboards if you’d like to cut us each a slice.”

Recognizing her words as an order disguised by pleasantries, I went through to the kitchen as she’d gestured for me to do, finding the plates and cake knife after a brief exploration of the room and prompting dishing us each a slice, returning to the parlor with plates and silverware in hand. She gave me a smile as I handed her her plate, the first I’d received since I’d arrived, and gestured for me to seat myself in another chair, also placed near the window and clearly there for the very purpose of receiving guests.

“Nothing to drink?” she asked after a moment’s quiet.

“Sorry?”

“No hot beverage to go with our coffee cake?”

“Oh, sorry, shall I make some tea, or . . .” I apologized, moving to stand up before she waved me off.

“One typically has coffee with coffee cake, hence the name,” she said still smiling as she took a dainty bite of the cake, “But I never could stand coffee, awful bitter stuff . . . As you no doubt remembered.”

“Sorry?” I paused with my fork partway to my mouth as my stomach sank and a frisson of cold threatened to shake me; I hadn’t even thought about the words coming out of my mouth.

“Did you really think that I wouldn’t be able to recognize my own grandchild?”

There was a moment’s silence again before I opened my mouth, with the intention of denying it, but I never got that far.

“Before you go about telling me that I’m mistaken, that age has distorted my memory, tell me: what are the odds that a man with the same hair and eyes as my grandson, with the same mole on the same hand as my grandson, should be found in the exact spot where my grandson was last seen and it truly be a complete stranger with no connection whatsoever?”

“Well, uh . . .” I began before giving up entirely, unable to look into Granny’s eyes and lie as she asked me, point-blank, if I was her grandchild, “I imagine the odds are practically none.”

She smiled and took another bite of cake, chewing and swallowing with an air of calm and contentment, the only sign of emotion running beneath the surface being the slight tremble in her voice when she spoke next.

“Welcome home, Marcel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grannies see through all your bullshit . . .  
> Next time, Viktor finds out what became of the rest of his family.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor talks with his grandmother from his last life, and learns what happened to the rest of his family . . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter so soon? Yes, I have severe insomnia, and I frequently don't see another human being for days on end, so . . .

“So, Viktor is the name you chose for yourself?” Granny asked once we’d finished our cake and I’d returned the plates to the kitchen.

The dappled sunlight filtering through green leaves and drifting white curtains contributed to the strange impression I had that I had somehow fallen out of time again, that we, in this parlor, hovered on the periphery of reality, in a state of limbo. It was limbo, in a way. Sitting there, talking with her, I was somewhere in between the world in which I had been a young boy named Marcel and the world in which I was a young man named Viktor, an amnesiac, frail, and secretly, desperately in love with the man who had found me. In the parlor, I was both, and neither.

“Yes,” I responded, infinitely relieved that this had gone as well as it did, with no one dying suddenly of shock, “I don’t know why, but when they asked me for one, it just sprang to mind, and it sounded like as good a one as any.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Granny said, with an expression that I could only describe as the very specific smirk of an elderly lady whose wealth of accumulated knowledge has proved important, “It is a family name after all.”

“It is?”

“It was my grandfather’s name,” she explained, “I can’t fathom why your mother decided to call her son Marcel when we had perfectly good Russian names, like Viktor, already in the family. We’re not French! But I suppose she was influenced by the fashion, thought that it would be exotic and interesting . . .”

“Um, Granny?” I asked, dreading the question I had to ask, and the answer to it all the more, “Why are you the only one living here? Where’s everyone else?”

She looked at me and I knew that she too had been dreading the asking of such a question and now was loathe to answer. I had my suspicions about why they’d gone, and I suspected that the answer would boil down to me, another thing that I had ruined, another thing to feel guilty for . . . but I couldn’t just live in ignorance, couldn’t just let it go.

“Well,” she sighed, “when you went missing, it was terrible for all of us, of course it was . . . and as the winter came, we all knew, though we couldn’t admit such a thing, that you were no longer living. A child on his own, out in the snow, it just wasn’t possible. And when the snow melted, we knew for certain.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I simply nodded. What could one say? I suspected that perhaps I might have been the only person to ever have to consider the appropriate response to news of their own death some ten years past. I could blame myself for a lot of things, but my lack of words was mercifully not one of them.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she said, reaching out to squeeze my hand with her bony fingers, “No one blamed you for dying, love. We grieved you, but no one blamed you. It wasn’t your fault, you understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Granny,” I responded, more out of obligation than sincere belief, unable to meet her eyes as she went on.

“But after they found you, your mother said she couldn’t bear to stay here, in this house, in this town. She, your father, and your siblings went away, all the way to San Francisco . . . I don’t know why she chose that city, perhaps she thought that she could lose her sorrows amidst all those people . . . They would send me letters, but after a time, the letters stopping coming. It took a while, writing to the proper authorities and waiting for a response, but eventually they were decent enough to tell me what had happened.”

“What had happened?” I asked quietly, feeling almost as though I were choking on my own heart.

“People started getting sick. The governor kept it quiet at first, then when it got out, he claimed it would only affect the immigrant neighborhoods, that everyone else would be spared, but of course it was just a filthy lie. Your mother . . . she fell ill, and by the time they realized what she had, it was too late for them to do anything for her.”

“They couldn’t do . . . anything?”

“Oh, my sweet boy,” Granny said, her own voice rough with unshed tears, “I’m so sorry, but she passed away . . . I’m told it was peaceful at the end, and she was with family.”

It was a lie, I knew it was, painless terminal illness sounded too far fetched. Whether Granny was the one who created the lie, or whether she was simply relaying what she’d been told, I couldn’t tell. There was nothing to say, so once again, I said nothing. 

Besides, I remembered dying. Even when I could no longer feel physical pain or discomfort, the terror had remained until my last moments. I didn’t want to go, and I despaired that the choice was no longer mine. It’s possible that my mother, in her illness, had had the time to come to terms with and accept her stolen choice, as I hadn’t had time . . . I hoped that this was indeed the case, that she hadn’t left in fear. 

What hurt so badly about finding out was that I couldn’t, that I wouldn’t, ever know. Our last moments are ours and ours alone, only we, ourselves, will ever know what happens in those final seconds. After which, it’s not really possible to relay that which one has discovered. I supposed that I could now, I could describe what dying had been like, but I wouldn’t do such a thing. I wouldn’t foist my fear off on anyone else.

“And after?” I asked, swallowing against a sob, knowing that I couldn’t go back to Yuuri’s mother in tears, it would be too difficult to explain.

“Afterwards,” Granny continued, “I’m afraid your father wasn’t up to the challenge of raising three children on his own. Your brother and sisters went to families that could care for them, and I’m told they are doing very well, or at least they were when I last heard.”

“When last you heard?”

“They belonged to other families now, I was no longer entitled to information on them.”

“But you are their grandmother!” I exclaimed with something between shock and disgust.

“The law is the law, I’m afraid,” Granny sighed, clearly resigned, “and in following the letter, the justice has been known to be lost. I wish I could have done more, but I was too old and infirm to care for them myself, so I can only trust that their new families did right by them. And I do believe that they did.”

“So they’re . . . all gone?” I said, my voice breaking even as my eyes remained dry.

“Not really gone. Your father and siblings are still out there in the world, and your mother is waiting in the next. The separation isn’t permanent,” she assured me with a bittersweet smile.

“I understand,” I told her, deciding that the truth of my experience with death was certainly not to be shared, certainly not with her, lest it destroy those beliefs that so filled her with hope, “but Granny . . .”

“Yes, love?”

“Why did you stay here, when they all left? Surely they must have wanted you to come along?” I voiced the lingering question that had been floating in my mind since I first heard she’d stayed here alone.

“I knew you would come back someday, back from the woods, and I didn’t want you to have no one here when you did,” she said, as if it were self-evident.

“You knew? But how could you know?”

“The angel told me,” she clarified, smiling sweetly, as if she hadn’t just said something either mad or revelational, leaving me once again, entirely without words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know what you're thinking: Granny is cool and all, but when are Viktor and Yuuri gonna SMOOCH?
> 
> And was the particular tragedy of Viktor's family an excuse to point out trivia that I know about the bubonic plague epidemic in San Francisco from 1900 to 1904? Yes, yes it was.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor comes back from Granny's house and Mari arrives . . . only to have a terrible fright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I'd have this up for y'all sooner, but I hadn't quite got it done before my sweetie arrived to visit me, and naturally writing got put on hold for the duration of their stay. Check my twitter to keep better apprised of fic status and my own personal nonsense: https://twitter.com/artemisgraceart

It’s quite amusing really, that my first response upon hearing her utter the word “angel” was skepticism, was doubt, but upon further thought, it wasn’t really any more outlandish and impossible of an idea than the notion of coming back from the dead in a new body after years of ghostly waiting, and that notion had already been proven true. Perhaps evidence was soon to be presented to me that angels are real as well, and that they are unexpectedly keen on interfering in the lives of really quite normal people, for that is what we had once been, before death and resurrection.

Death had trailed its cold hand across my skin, yes, but not only mine. It had touched my mother and taken her away with its chill caress, as it would eventually do to us all, and at that thought, I was simultaneously seized by the fear that death could only hold you the once, and the fear that it could take you twice. I had already met the end that is foreseen for all things living upon our green earth, and now that I lived again, was a second death waiting for me? Would I die of illness or old age as this new body of mine weakened and gradually failed me?

Or worse . . . had I already had my death? Did another not await me? Strangely, the fear of immortality was even sharper than the fear of dying, lacerating my sense of composure in its typically uncaring way. 

I didn’t want to die before Yuuri, not before I’d spent every last moment with him that I could, but neither did I want to watch him wither while I continued on as if the ages had skipped me over, to watch him fade with the dying light while I was forced to continue on to one dawn and then another and another . . . Solitude. Loneliness. That was the true fear. I’d happily live through all the ages of the world if my love would live on beside me, but I could never stand the trickling sands of an ever-full hourglass on my own. I didn’t dare even imagine it, for there, I knew, lay real madness.

I hadn’t known what to say about the angel, so for the time being, I let the subject drop, and our conversation gradually faded until Granny suggested that I get back to Hiroko before she began to worry, as it had certainly passed the hour span she had recommended for visiting. I bid her farewell with the promise that I’d visit again, often. Not only out of obligation to my only remaining close relation -at least, that I had any hope of finding- but also out of the need to care for myself. I could already feel that it had done me good to be in the company of someone around whom I had no need to pretend.

Stepping back out of the house and into the sunlight was like stepping back into the world from someplace beyond, breaching that veil and coming back to the green world in which things lived and grew, in which Yuuri lived and grew, as I caught sight of him also returning to the house. He waved to me and slowed his pace so that I might catch up and that we might go in together, and in that moment my existential fears overcame me momentarily before retreating, like waves upon the sands of the coast. A coast that I, and probably Yuuri as well, had never seen, yet the image of waves crashing down with such violence, to reveal sands made smooth by the chaos, resonated with me so well. 

The waves crash down upon us, destructive and vicious for all their indifference, and in the turmoil of it, we are made new . . .

He smiled at the sight of me, that sweet smile of his, and it felt almost like a physical blow to my chest, but I did not resent him for it, after all, how could I? And as I got nearer, he held out his arm so that I might take it, although it must have been obvious that I didn’t really need it. Oh, but I did want it, the warmth of him, the solidity of his arm, upon which my hand rested. However bittersweet they could be, and mired as they were in uncertainty, the touches that passed between us were something of a base for me to stand upon, for each one impressed upon me the notion that I was no ghost . . . a fear that had continued to visit me upon occasion, in the small hours after midnight.

“Where are you coming back from?” he asked me, accommodating me as I gave in to temptation, stooping slightly and dipping my head to let it rest lightly upon his shoulder.

“Your mother asked me to take a cake over to the old lady in the next house over,” I replied, detaching myself from the last hour or two as much as I had to, to keep up appearances, “I hadn’t seen her at all until today.”

“And how did that go?”

“I can honestly say that it was . . . challenging,” I replied upon a sigh, and it was certainly true, my spirit had been challenged more than a little over the last couple of hours, and I was grateful now to be able to concentrate on Yuuri beside me, rather than the multitude of things I had to trouble me.

“Poor thing,” Yuuri cooed, tipping his head to knock it gently against mine in solidarity.

“She’s a perfectly lovely lady,” I explained, really rather relieved at how honest I could be in this conversation without giving anything away, “but she made me feel . . . sad.”

“I do know what you mean,” Yuuri sighed, “Sometimes she’ll be sharp as a tack, and other times it’s as if she’s living in a different world, seeing things that aren’t there, speaking nonsense. And sometimes I can’t even tell which, whether she’s saying nonsense, or speaking wisdom . . .”

“The two can be surprisingly hard to distinguish,” I agreed, nodding, and on doing so, rubbing my cheek against the soft skin at his temple.

“I used to be the one bringing over cakes,” Yuuri told me, conversationally, “when I was still too small to go out and help my dad.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, I’d bring over whatever baked good mama sent me to deliver, and I’d sit with her for a while while we each had a slice. The poor dear would get so terribly confused,” his eyes closed upon a melancholy sigh, “She’d call out to me as I came in, but she’d call her grandson’s name. It was the sound of my shoes apparently, the short, rapid stride of a little boy’s shoes against the floor. She thought it was him, coming home.”

“I’m sorry, Yuuri,” I muttered, looking down to my feet in poorly disguised shame.

“You don’t need to apologize,” he told me with a soft, comforting squeeze, and I so desperately wanted to tell him that yes, I did need to apologize, that I knew he’d cried himself to sleep at night because of me, and how much I regretted it, and how much I regretted deceiving him now.

But that wasn’t something I could say.

“I’m sorry that you were hurt like that,” I said instead, apologizing as much as I was able in my disguise, “I don’t like to think of you suffering heartache.”

“I feel the same,” he said quietly, slowing to a stop just outside the door, and something in his voice told me that he was talking about more than just a desire for one’s friend to never come to harm.

The look in his eyes only confirmed it, brown irises warm, like molten honey, and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, as if it were trying desperately to escape the cage of my ribs.

“Do you really?” I couldn’t help but ask, words catching in my throat, emerging whispery as the beating of moth’s wings.

“I do.”

The word choice, I knew, wasn’t coincidental.

I could have kissed him then, indeed, I almost did, and I’m certain now that he would have leaned in to meet me had we not heard the soft pattering of brisk footsteps coming up the path behind us, shoe leather crunching softly on gravel and packed earth. His eyes, lit up though they were, were illuminated with a different light as he turned them from my face to see who would be joining us, and he looked for all the world like an overjoyed child again, cheeks dimpling as he smiled and called out.

“Mari!”

“Yuuri!” she called back to him, seeming to have not noticed me yet . . . but then she did.

I had but mere moments to take in her face, more mature than I remembered it, her traveling outfit and rather massive carpet bag both slightly dusty from the journey, before she caught sight of me.

And opened her mouth in a scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm building up for a thing that I'm afraid may upset some of you, but I promise, it is a happy ending, for all involved.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mari's home, and she doesn't trust Viktor nearly as readily as the rest of the family do. Then, Viktor has a nightmare, but Yuuri is there to comfort him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ya boi has been mad depressed and sick pretty much constantly, so I'm officially giving up on this whole student exchange thing and going back home to where my family and my sweetie can help me look after myself. So that's why updates haven't been forthcoming.
> 
> This chapter is a bit of a longer one though, so that's fun. I am posting at 2 a.m. without proofreading it though, so please forgive any errors you may come across.

It didn’t truly echo, the sound of the scream that emerged from Yuuri’s sister’s mouth, but it seemed to do so to my ears, ringing like church bells drawing mourners to a funeral, a multitude of wails overlapping to become a true cacophony. Outdoors, in the open, there was no enclosed space in which the sound could echo, but within the walls of my skull, it certainly did.

It may have shocked me in the moment, but I did not begrudge her a scream, for in all truthfulness, the only reason I hadn’t screamed when I first looked upon myself was that I couldn’t find the voice to do so. The fact that she screamed at the sight of me wasn’t exceptional, on the contrary, the fact that this was the first true fear I’d encountered from another since my return was far more exceptional. 

A scream wouldn’t be an unreasonable reaction, after all, when faced with a living echo of a decades old tragedy.

“A ghost!” she shouted, and while I flinched in the protection of the arms which still surrounded me, she wasn’t exactly incorrect.  
Yuuri however, darling that he is, was quick to soothe us both.

“No, Mari, it’s alright, this is Viktor!,” Yuuri reassured her, “Mama wrote you about him, didn’t she? There’s no ghost.”

Bless him. Standing there, in our unsettled company of three, he told that lie with sincerity of belief, but I could see in Mari’s eyes that he was the only one of us to not realize the untruth. She visibly relaxed, but I knew that it was for Yuuri’s benefit, not mine, and she still couldn’t keep the next question back as it burst forth from her startled mouth.

“But, he looks just like-” she began as a poorly-suppressed shiver ran through me, before Yuuri cut her off.

“Mari,” he said sharply, eyes begging her to stop.

For my sake. He’d been trying to keep me from it, from how much I look like a dead child from a short lifetime ago, to spare my feelings from the upset of it. I had, of course, heard people speak of it on more than one occasion, but the words were never said directly to me, merely overheard from around a corner or on the other side of a door. When neighbors and acquaintances tried to point out the similarities, Yuuri would halt them in their speech, with a meaningful glance to me from the corner of his eye, much as he did then, speaking to Mari.

But perhaps he didn’t do so just for my sake, but for his own as well. I couldn’t imagine that having his new friend -as I appeared in the eyes of others, though the two of us knew better- constantly compared with the dear childhood friend he’d lost to the winter could have been in any way a pleasant thing. It was safer for both our fragile hearts for the words to not reach our ears, even if we knew they would still be spoken.

“Viktor,” he said, turning to me and away from all spectres of death in favor of proper introductions, “This is my sister, Mari. And Mari, this is Viktor.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, miss,” I told her, still too far from her to offer a hand in greeting, so I settled for a polite smile and the appropriate words, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Pleased to meet you too,” Mari replied, and although it was phrased as a statement, the tone of it was rather closer to a question, as though she yet reserved judgement, awaiting more information before any true conclusions were to be formed.

“Here, let me get your bag,” Yuuri said, releasing me and stepping forward to his sister, attempting to take the handle of her carpet bag in hand before finding said hand gently slapped away.

“I’m perfectly able to carry it myself,” she protested, heaving the bag up a little higher and heading for the front door, through which the sounds of Hiroko frantically cooking could still be faintly heard.

I stepped aside to allow her unimpeded entrance, watching as she eyed me from the periphery of her vision, as one might a dog one didn’t entirely trust not to bite, and I honestly half expected her to reach out with a hand and grab me to determine whether or not I did indeed have a true corporeal form. Her hands did not reach out, however, choosing instead to grip her carpet bag with slightly more force than I suspected was strictly necessary, and she passed without incident into the shade of the entryway, leaving Yuuri and I standing quietly, alone again, outside in the gentle warmth of the sunlight for a moment. 

He gave me an apologetic smile, though whether the apology was for Mari’s exclamation or for the moment that her arrival had put to an abrupt halt was unclear. Reaching out the hand the help of which Mari had rejected, Yuuri brought a palm to smooth soothingly up and down my arm, which I hadn’t realized was trembling still, like a shivering aspen. His warmth chased away the chill that had come over me, and when he tilted his head toward the door in a silent question, I nodded, better prepared to continue with Yuuri’s the warmth of Yuuri’s hand seeping through the fabric of my shirt.

Smiling again, he turned to enter the house, with me following closely at his heel, feeling rather like a shadow as I hoped to myself that I might be ignored, at least by the new element that was Mari. She didn’t trust me, and while it wasn’t necessarily unjustified, seeing her distrust each time her eyes passed over my face sounded rather like something I’d prefer to avoid.

As we stepped over the threshold, a squeal of delight met our ears, the sound of Hiroko discovering the arrival of her daughter, and I could see a grin sprout upon Yuuri’s face, a reflection of it springing unbidden to my own features. It had been a while, Hiroko had told me, since the family was last reunited, all together under one roof, and I could see already that this reunion was doing Yuuri good. I hadn’t known Mari very well on my first time around, as she didn’t often play with Yuuri and I, but I did recall how Yuuri had looked up to his older sister, a fondness which appeared to have endured.

While I knew that Mari wouldn’t be staying terribly long, I was seized by the desire to earn her approval, to whatever extent proved possible. She was Yuuri’s beloved sister, and whatever he might feel for me, she is family, and her opinion would, and frankly should, be enough to give him pause . . . and I’d rather not give her cause to give him pause. I’d been called charming as a child, but it felt in that moment before facing Mari once again, as though my charm had all but abandoned me. I could only pray that I had enough left to place myself at least at the periphery of Mari’s good graces.

Following Yuuri to the kitchen, I was greeted with the sight of an uncannily composed Mari having her cheeks aggressively squished by her mother’s hands as Hiroko cooed happily up at her oldest child, the very image of a proud mother. Getting closer though, the tugging of a smile at the corners of Mari’s mouth was visible as she withstood the storm of her mother’s affections, and in her face I caught a glimpse of the young girl I remembered. 

I hoped then that she had been there for Yuuri, during that time when I wasn’t. It couldn’t have been easy for her, for though the two of us weren’t exactly great friends, I was a familiar face in her life, and it must have been unsettling to find said face suddenly gone. It couldn’t have been easy, but Mari had an advantage of sorts in the face of grief, never having been too touched by the anxiety and tendency toward self-blame that Yuuri had displayed, even as a child. I hoped that she’d been able to be that stronger person for him, to be the protective big sister that Yuuri had no doubt needed.

Watching them joke together, there in the kitchen, over the head of an ever-cooing Hiroko, I suspected that Mari had indeed been there, that she had been able to be what Yuuri needed. If there were any way I could do so without betraying my identity, I would have thanked her . . . for doing what I couldn’t. 

I largely played the part of the spectator for the rest of the evening, sitting beside Yuuri and listening as he and Hiroko quizzed Mari on the details of her life in the city: her job, her friends, how she chose to pass what little spare time she was given. Factory hours were long, and the work difficult, but Mari appeared not to mind it terribly much, having always been more oriented towards the physical than the academic. Moving on her feet and carrying boxes of raw materials was preferable, she’d said, to sitting all day in front of a sewing machine, as one of two of her friends did for work, or to transcribing texts as another friend did. Sewing or acting as a secretary, a more sedentary life, would no doubt have driven her absolutely mad with boredom in little time at all, of that we could be sure.

All of Mari’s news shared, I was slightly alarmed as the conversation turned to me, the most notable new element of recent months. I became the uncomfortable spectator instead to talk of myself, volunteering little in the way of words and relying instead on Yuuri to relay the odd tale of my arrival. He had been there, after all, and frankly he’d been conscious for rather more of it than I myself had been, so he could reasonably be argued to be a better narrator for my story than I was.

As Yuuri spoke, with the occasional interjection from Hiroko, I let my eyes stray more often than not to my own feet, but I could still feel the sharpness of Mari’s appraising gaze as she regarded me. Yuuri and Hiroko didn’t appear to notice, but I felt rather sure that the story, even coming from the lips of her own dear brother, did not have her entirely convinced. But perhaps that was more a reflection of my own fears than the truth of the situation.

Mercifully, there was only so much that could be said about me before the tale wore thin and the conversation turned to safer, more benign topics, and when Yuuri’s father returned home in the early evening, I listened again as Mari relayed stories of her life in the city. 

Such a warmth, there was, seated in a circle in front of the fire, listening quietly to the soft sounds of jokes, jibes, and familiar words of endearment tossed back and forth by smiling mouths. The firelight flickered gently over the faces of the Katsuki family, all together in one place for the first time in a long while, and while I felt my heart warmed at the sight, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my own loss, the news of which I had received only hours ago. My own family, the one I had been born to, would never sit together before comforting flame . . .

Though in all honesty, we hadn’t even done so often when we were together. Fireside talks were never a frequent occurrence in my household, but that is not to say that there wasn’t love, there was, but the form it took was somewhat more distant. My parents were never very physically affectionate, nor very emotionally open with their children, but I did not resent them for it; it was simply their way. In missing this, in missing firelight and warmth and closeness in the night, I was missing something which I myself had never had, missing a memory that wasn’t my own. 

And although I had it then, in the moment, I also couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of loneliness in the vibrance of their company, for I myself was pale, my colors unsaturated, and my hands cold. I sat amongst them, but not as one of them. Not the way I felt when it was just Yuuri and I, chatting away into the depths of night . . . but I supposed that, apart from anything else, it’s much easier to feel at home in a crowd of two than a crowd of five.

There it was again, though, that sensation of being somehow transparent, or draped in a thin, gauzy sheet, separated from the world and those around me by but a slender whisper of fabric. I had been so vivacious as a little boy; some might have even called me troublesome, I must admit. My cares were few and my thirst for the world and everything in it which I had yet to discover pushed me beyond the confines of what’s expected of an obedient child, spurring me to stray from the path, almost always with little Yuuri in tow. My recklessness would get us into trouble, and my charm, with the assistance of Yuuri’s sweet smile, would get us out of it again.

I’d been prone to whims and fancies, some of which bordered on the eccentric, my heart light and mind carefree . . . but that carefree child had strayed too far from the road in a wintry storm, taken by a fancy that proved deadly as well as unwise, and I had to acknowledge that my whimsy, my vivaciousness, may not have returned along with the rest of me. It certainly felt so, as I sat there with the Katsuki family, and yet mostly without. I wished that Yuuri would notice it, my withdrawal into myself, the flickering of my presence among them. I wished that he would take my hand in his and pull me back into the firelight, but he didn’t, laughing along with his family, eyes shining . . . I didn’t want him to worry for me, not really . . . but at the same time, I still craved that warmth, so I hovered in between, in that place between reaching out and withdrawing further.

But that’s the inherent selfishness of human affection, isn’t it? Do we wish for our loved ones to be free of worry for their own sake, or because it makes us, ourselves, feel better? Even selflessness is selfish when you observe it from. I wanted Yuuri to be free from worry, as much as possible, and in doing so I hid that which would upset him, knowing that the deceit, should it be discovered, would also upset him. Was I doing it for him, or myself? Or did I do it for him, but only because his happiness brought me contentment? 

Even after the fact, I couldn’t say for sure, but perhaps he asked himself the same questions in his own quiet moments . . . All I could say for certain was that, whatever my motivations, I would hold his hand whenever he asked me too, for whatever reason he wanted it, and even if he didn’t ask, if I had the slightest suspicion that he needed a hand to hold, I would take it in mine without a thought.

It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t notice, sitting by my side in the warm glow of the fire. He would have held my hand if he had, I knew he would have.

As it was, he didn’t let me retire that evening without a palm slid gently into my own, to give an affectionate squeeze, and a smile that I swore could melt glaciers. He saw me to the guest room, now my room in all but name, and bid me a sweet goodnight, bringing my hand up to his lips, and I shivered at the soft brush of them against my knuckles. Any previous night, I might have frozen then, but that night, rather than letting him withdraw, I gripped his hand with my own hesitant fingers and brought it to my lips, mirroring his gesture. The look on his face was simply priceless . . . beautiful . . . and were we alone, were Mari not sure to come down that same hall any moment, we might have taken up right where we’d left off in the front garden that afternoon.

As if on cue, Mari did appear, although not entirely as I had expected. She approached us carrying a stack of blankets and a pillow, all of which she unceremoniously dumped into Yuuri’s arms as his and my hands separated.

“Wha-?” Yuuri asked, startled and confused.

“I’m taking your room tonight, Yuuri,” Mari explained, “Mom said you can sleep in Viktor’s room, hence the blankets.”

“On the floor?”

“That would be up to you,” Mari shrugged, evidently pleased enough that she would have her own room for the night, and largely unconcerned with the sleeping arrangements of anyone else, “Go make up your bed, I want to speak to Viktor for a moment.”

“What about?” Yuuri said, curious and what I might even have called defensive.

“Nosy,” she observed in response, at which point the siblings did the traditional thing, sticking their tongues out mockingly at each other, before Yuuri slipped away to begin setting up his place for the night.

Her eyes then turned on me, sharp.

“I know who you are,” she told me, voice low so that Yuuri wouldn’t overhear, “I don’t know how you’re here, or why, but you’d best not hurt any of us, least of all Yuuri. He’s been through enough for you and because of you.”

I couldn’t nod, because that would be admitting to everything, nor could I shake my head in denial, for the lie would be obvious and do nothing to improve Mari’s perception of me. But it seemed as though she hadn’t been expecting a real answer, satisfied with taking in the wideness of my frightened eyes and the wincing of my thin form, before bidding a quick goodnight and heading away to Yuuri’s room, in which she’d be staying the night.

Stunned, I turned and entered the guest room to see Yuuri fussing with blankets and his pillow down on the floor a couple of feet away from the bed.

“What did Mari want?” he asked me, looking up to where I stood as I quietly shut the door.

“Um, to give me vague threats?” I responded, frankly lacking anything else to say in its stead.

“Sounds about right,” Yuuri chuckled, face creasing in a fond grin, “Don’t pay attention to it though, she won’t actually do anything to you.”

“Right,” I said, not entirely sure that Yuuri was correct in this particular circumstance, and less than keen to risk it.

I stepped gingerly across the floor in between the bed and Yuuri, pulling back the covers and climbing in before looking back down at Yuuri, who had begun to settle himself in his pallet or more accurately, his blanket nest.

“Are you going to be alright down there all night?” I asked, concerned about the less than pleasant effects of a night spent on a hardwood floor.

“Of course,” he reassured me with his sweetheart smile, “Are you going to be alright up there?”

“I’m sure I’ll survive,” I chuckled, “You settled? Then I’ll turn off the light.”

A stretching of an arm and a quick extinguishing breath later, we were both plunged into darkness, but knowing that Yuuri was there, not far from me, the darkness felt warmer, more velvet than it usually did as I put my head down on my own pillow. I let the soft darkness envelop me, and before long, I’d fallen fast asleep, listening to the sound of Yuuri’s steady breathing.

But although drifting off had been as pleasant as I could have asked for, Yuuri’s soothing presence didn’t follow me into the realm of dreams. My dreams were instead tainted by a mist of spreading chill and the menacing creeping of frost tendrils upon a window pane. Winter was months away, but it had still come for me in the night, causing me to shiver and shudder beneath the quilt as though I lay beneath naught but an ever growing dusting of snow. I was not in bed, but in a winter wood and I gasped, flinching at the way the cold air stung my lungs. The weight of the snow grew heavier and heavier and began to weigh down my limbs; in my fear, I began to struggle against it-

Until I woke up to see Yuuri’s face hovering above my own in the dark, brow creased with concern. It was his arms that held me, that I struggled against until I realized that the forest of my dream was years away, but Yuuri was right there.

“Viktor? Are you awake?” 

“Yes, sorry,” I answered, startled again to find my voice ragged, as though I’d been shouting . . . though maybe I had, going by what I could make out of Yuuri’s expression in the gloom.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said softly, “but are you alright?”

“Of course,” I told him, but I knew I wasn’t convincing in the slightest as my voice broke over the words, and I felt the corners of my eyes growing wet.

I sat up then, too exhausted and afraid to do anything but lunge forward into Yuuri’s arms, which opened for me and took me in in a heartbeat, pulling me close to his chest, to the warmth of his core.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he sighed, and I felt him press a kiss to the parting of my hair, the sensation of which only made me bury my face harder into his chest and wrap my arms tighter around his shoulders, “What can I do?”

Yuuri, my blasted saint.

“Nothing,” I did my best to stifle the sob that tried to crawl up my throat, to little avail, “Just . . stay with me?”

There was my selfishness again, rearing its head, and I hadn’t the heart to repress it.

“Of course I will,” he whispered, his breath warm as it ruffled through the strands of my hair, “Budge up a bit.”

“Huh?”

“Make me some room, love,” he clarified, gesturing for me to move closer to the wall.

He didn’t have to tell me a third time; once I understood his intent, I detached myself from him and shifted back until I felt my spine against the wall and lifted an arm, making a space for him alongside me beneath the blankets. He climbed in and wriggled a little before settling at my side, a warm and comforting presence as he rolled over to wrap an arm around me once again. I, of course, clung to him once more, all the harder, feeling his loving heart beat beneath my palm.

And the rest of that night, I slept better than I had since I was a child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So after this period of radio silence, what are y'all thinking?  
> Is it gonna be awkward when they wake up in bed together tomorrow morning?

**Author's Note:**

> It gets happier, people, don't you worry ...


End file.
